Rapper will.i.am is convinced he died and came back to life in a childhood swimming scare. The Black Eyed Peas frontman reveals he nearly drowned as a youngster when he went against his mother’s orders by taking a dip in a pool, despite not knowing how to swim. In an interview on CNBC, he explains, “I was like, ‘Ma, can I go swimming?’ She was like, ‘No, boy, you ain’t going in no swimming pool.’ So my mom said no but I did the opposite. I’ve never been in a swimming pool and so I don’t know the difference between three feet and nine feet – I’m thinking that everything is at the height that I’m at. “So I’m walking and I start sinking and then I drown. I’m under water for about three or four minutes.” The hip-hop star had to be resuscitated, and he admits his family feared the worst during the scare. He recalls, “They gave me mouth to mouth and then I’m, like, dead. And then I come back. They took me to hospital and I’m in there for about a week or something. I almost lost my life. I did lose my life but when I came to and I was in the hospital… to see the worry on my mom and my uncle’s faces… And just the reminder of, like, don’t do things that you know you shouldn’t be doing. I shouldn’t have been swimming because I never knew how to swim.”